welcome! jeremy freese is a professor in sociology at northwestern university. he finds blogging to be a good diversion from insomnia and a far better use of time than television.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

when i'm out wandering upon the hills of iowa, i am, in fact, thinking of you

Okay, so my understanding from other blogs is that I can do this as long as (1) the link is only up for a temporary period of time, (2) it is plain I am putting it up noting that it is part of an album that I strongly recommend that you own and mean to be promoting here, and (3) I reiterate that I will immediately remove it upon objection from the copyright holder or any other interested party.

In that spirit, here is an ephemeralink to Dar Williams's "Iowa", the song I believe should be adopted as the official song of my home state.* If you haven't heard it, it's worth a listen. If you don't own any Dar Williams albums, I would recommend Out There Live, which features a live version of "Iowa," over any of her studio albums. Indeed, I am convinced that Dar Williams's fame has been hindered by strange studio production decisions that make the live versions of many of her songs better than the versions she had many takes to work on with professional mixers and producers and such. (Case in point: "As Cool As I Am," a beautiful and catchy song that somehow got horribly polluted by horns in the studio.)

* Whatever the likelihood of my ever actually living there again, my home state will always be Iowa.

6 comments:

Here are some comments from my sister on making "Iowa" the state song that she left on my blog after I mentioned your campaign:

"I know Dar and I can’t quite get behind her as an Iowa spokesperson. Maybe I know too much. Could have something to do with her lack of sobriety………but the song is cool.

If this were up for a vote, I think Greg Brown’s “Iowa Waltz” would win. You should know Greg…he’s an Iowa City fixture, along with Bo Ramsey and all those other blues bands. Greg really captures Iowa past and present.

Then of course for the younger folks…there’s always Slipknot’s “Iowa.” Not sure you can really call that a song, but to their credit, they have the most amusing Iowa quote I’ve seen to date:

I saw a concert a couple years back featuring Dar, Mary Chapin Carptenter, Shawn Colvin, and Patty Griffin on stage together taking turns singing songs. A 'guitar pull' as they called it. It may be that Griffin was especially on or the others were somewhat off that evening, but Griffin seemed in a different league (especially when her turn came up and she sang 'Poor Man's House'). All of the performers were enjoyable; but in that rotating format, you could really compare artists in a way that separate concerts wouldn't allow. Having said that, I do like Dar's 'Iowa'.

Wow, I'm impressed by the technology! Jeremy, I'm curious, how did you set this up? I always thought I'd have to subscribe to a service to be able to post songs.

Also, Bertha: Hope I'm not too late, but the common practice on music blogs is to download the song directly from the post (before the link breaks) by right clicking "save link as." Then, per instructions from the blogger, go and buy the entire album from the artist. But do that much later after you've listened to the free song 100x and used it on a mixtape.